PODCAST

How To Engage With Influencers Without Spending A Bomb with Josh Elledge – Ep104

You don’t have to spend a ton of money on marketing and advertising in order to engage influencers. That’s what Josh Elledge did and succeeded at. Josh started his career as a journalist and morning DJ in the Navy. He failed in that and at six other businesses before hitting gold with the seventh and eighth Savings Angel and Up My Influence. In this episode, Josh joins Paul Higgins to share some lessons he picked up throughout his personal journey. He talks about how to build influencer engagement affordably and shares some of the apps he uses for productivity and the podcasts he frequently listens to.

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Listen to the podcast here:

How To Engage With Influencers Without Spending A Bomb with Josh Elledge

Our guest is someone who spent time in the Navy as a journalist, but he knew he was a poor employee. He left and had six spectacular business failures. He hit gold in business seven and business eight. He shared some amazing lessons through his journey. If you want to know how to engage influencers, then this is a blog you must read. What I’ll do now is hand you over to Josh Elledge from Up My Influence.

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Welcome, Josh Elledge. We’re going to get to know lots about you, Josh. Why don’t we start with something that your family or friends would know about you that we wouldn’t?

I actually have an irrational fear of umbrellas and that is no joke. If you walk with me on a sidewalk on a rainy day, I will typically walk with my hands relatively near my face as to protect my eyes. I’m fearful that those little poke-y things on the outside are coming straight for my corneas.

Was it an incident, Josh?

I think there was when I was young. I don’t remember it but as far as I can remember, I’m always considerate of it.

Where are you living?

I am in Orlando, Florida, home of Disney World.

I’m assuming you don’t get a lot of rain there other than hurricanes or cyclones.

No, we get plenty of rain here. When it’s not raining, it is 95% humidity. We’re close to the tropics.

I know you’ve had a fantastic corporate career. I know you were in the Navy. Why don’t you give us a snapshot of that career?

I went straight out of high school into the US Navy. I served as a US Navy journalist for three years. I was stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I spent one year out in the Aleutian Islands off of Alaska. I was a morning DJ, that was my actual job in the Navy. I wasn’t good. I was pretty bad, to be honest with you. It was quite a great experience. I went to school for family therapy, but I ended up getting distracted with the whole internet dot-com boom. I became an internet developer and I did that for a number of years in Corporate America. I was not a good employee. Even though it was a great job with fine pay and good working conditions, I felt like I needed to do my own thing. I was always afraid that I was going to get fired, probably because I wasn’t a good employee.

When I went out on my own, I started a number of businesses. I worked as an independent contractor, internet developer. I learned a lot about marketing. I wasn’t particularly good. I actually failed in business six times. I exited fairly gracefully. A couple of times, I failed rather spectacularly. On that seventh venture, I ended up creating a seven-figure a year company. That was SavingsAngel, which I launched in 2008. Subsequently, I launched another company in 2014 because I had so much success in working with the media. I was doing so much pro bono work helping other business owners replicate that success that I had with the media that I started getting bombarded with requests for help. I’ve been in the media over 2,000 times and have been doing so much pro bono work in my local marketplace. That turned into consulting. Now, we’ve developed a global agency that’s going through a lot of growth. It’s fun.

That’s a great journey. Most people say that success is only on the near side of failure. What are some of the key learnings that you took out of those six attempts?

One of my most spectacular failures that led to personal bankruptcy and foreclosure was when I had started a small-town newspaper and a blog before there were such things as blogs. The blog site was a little bit ahead of its time. The newspaper was a dated business plan. I don’t recommend anyone start a newspaper these days. I was not in a good position. The reason I failed is because I was afraid of sales. I did everything in my power to avoid meeting with potential advertisers and selling them on advertising. That’s a problem when you own a newspaper. You need to have advertisers to support that, otherwise, it’s not going to work out well. I would do everything in my power to hire other people to do that work because I was afraid of rejection. I was afraid that people were going to think I was inauthentic. It ended up being painful.

My next business was nothing but sales and marketing. I put myself into a position where I took the thing that I struggled with the most and I made it the centerpiece of all my work. Because of that, I spent five years in sales and marketing. I ended up getting good at it because I was able to relax and realize that sales have nothing to do with convincing people to buy something. It has everything to do with bringing value to people. It’s finding ways to serve people, to collaborate, and to bring value to the world. When I made that shift, everything became so much easier. It’s not that I haven’t had challenges, but I don’t have that fear anymore. I get excited now about meeting with new people and finding if there’s a way that I can bring them value.

Through all those journeys with your own businesses, who are the people that helped you along the way, particularly with your sales and marketing? Was there anyone in particular that helped you with that?

Engaging Influencers: The number one reason that companies are not growing at the rate they wish they could is that they don’t have enough authority.

Yes. One thing that I was smart in doing is I found the most successful person I could in that sales organization and I shadowed them. I offered to help them with everything and anything that I could. I happen to know how to develop internet websites. His name was Tony. I said, “Tony, I will develop websites for you. Here’s everything that I know how to do. Put me to work. I will do everything in my power to help you.” That was smart because as I did that, he helped me a lot.

I remember back in high school when my grandpa gave me a piece of advice. He said, “Make friends with the biggest kid in school.” That kid in my high school was Ken Broncama. He was humongous and I made friends with him. Sure enough, anytime that I had a bully issue, I would let Ken know. Ken would go and stomp on them. That’s what I did with the sales and marketing. I found the most successful person I could and basically did his homework for him. As a result, we had a friendship. I ended up doing well with that company over that course of five years.

Let’s look at the Build section. With Up My Influence, when people say, “Josh, what do you do?” how do you explain that?

I turn thoughtful entrepreneurs into media celebrities. In doing so, I help them create more influence, authority and ultimately, far more revenue.

How do you do that, Josh?

Having been in the media over 2,000 times, I’ve learned a couple of things. In the beginning, I was terrible at it. It was one of those things that I’m like, “What if I was good at this?” I’m not saying I’m really good at it, but I’ve learned a lot. It’s mainly having to do with how to network my way into being able to work with influencers and media and get onto large stages. I’ve had the opportunity to speak at Social Media Marketing World a few times. I’ve been a keynote speaker. I was invited by the Tony Robbins organization to speak to his Business Mastery audience. All of those were incremental improvements and incremental effort. You show up over and over again. That’s how I continued to rise.

In the beginning, when I launched SavingsAngel, I was in a position where my back was against the wall. I had no choice. I had no money for advertising. The only thing I could think of is, “Maybe I could talk to these publishers of ad magazines, news magazines, TV stations and radio stations. I reached out to them and I said, “I don’t have any money but maybe I could provide some value in a different way. I don’t need to get paid or any promotion. Please let me be of service.” That was my approach and it ended up working out well. I started doing local radio segments. I started being able to do major market radio. I started writing a small-town newspaper column, which then turned into a syndicated newspaper column. I started doing local TV that turned into syndicated TV. TV alone, I’ve been on over 800 times as a consumer advocate.

That has helped SavingsAngel. In the $7 million or so that we’ve done in revenue, the thing that most people think is pretty shocking is that we’ve spent less than $500 in advertising. We don’t advertise, we don’t need to. I’ve heard someone say that advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable. I don’t know that I’m remarkable, but I feel like I keep on showing up, serving and trying to inspire people. Maybe it’s to save money if I’m working with SavingsAngel. Maybe it’s how they can improve their authority and their influence through Up My Influence. People can tell when there’s a level of authenticity. People can tell when you’re just trying to sell and when you truly care about bringing value.

What are some of the things you see people going about it the wrong way?

When I speak about this, I play a bit of a trick on the audience. I say, “For the next ten minutes, I want you guys to go and do PR stuff. Go and do some public relations. On your mark, get set, go.” I let them squirm, sweat a little bit, and struggle. I say, “I’m not going to make you do that,” after about ten seconds. “Let me ask you, what were you going to do?” Almost invariably, someone will raise their hand and say, “I would start emailing reporters or start messaging influencers.” Normally, that is one of the worst things you could do. Your tendency is to want to sell and you want to go for the jugular. You want to get your product or service in front of audiences. That’s pretty inappropriate. That’s not the job of an influencer. That’s not the job of a journalist, certainly, to promote your product or service. It is their job to inspire, enlighten, educate and inform. Similarly, if you want to build a good relationship with an influencer, that should be your philosophy as well. Take your marketing ad, set it on the shelf for a little bit, relax and go to work. The more people you serve, the more value you bring. You will get everything you want in business. I promise you.

You said thoughtful entrepreneurs. Describe your ideal client.

We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. Specifically, when we are working with clients and if we ask them, “What is your why? Why are you doing this? What is the impact that you want to make?” If I hear, “We just want to make money,” it becomes a lot less fun. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. I love making money. I love helping people make money. Money is only going to sustain you for so long. When you get the money, then what? It’s backward to say, “When I get the money, I will make a positive impact in the world.” That’s not how it works. You have to start with the philosophy of, “I’m going to make a positive impact in the world. Whatever it takes, I’m going to do that. I’m going to make a splash.”

Having that philosophy and when you lead with why, that’s Simon Sinek. What is the reason? Why are you doing this? What is your purpose? What are your core values? When you have those in place, it’s amazing. We tripled our business in a matter of months when we shifted to becoming more why-focused as opposed to having a transactional relationship with our audience. You give me money, I give you this. Similarly, we like to find that out from our potential clients before we engage with them.

What do the next three years hold for Up My Influence?

Three years is so much time. I have to do what I do. There are business owners that are going out of business because they are not getting traction, visibility and exposure. Exposure is everything. Because they are not getting that, they’re having to give up on their dreams. They’re having to go back to their job in Corporate America. I need to help them. I know that that’s why I’m on earth. In terms of my impact in the world, I know that we are facilitating a lot of good. We are helping people serve and make more of a positive economic impact on the lives of people. We are helping them truly bring value with their products and services. In terms of total impact, I don’t know that there’s a metric on that, but I do know that there’s an emotional impact on it. That emotional impact is impacting the cumulative lives of millions of people because of how we are able to amplify the message of those who we serve.

Your energy is absolutely contagious. There are a lot of PR agencies or people in PR out there. What’s unique about Up My Influence that someone reading right now would say, “I’ve got to get on the phone to Josh?”

Engaging Influencers: As you’re building a team, get on Slack sooner rather than later. You have to systematize that.

I cannot tell you. You think I haven’t been on my soapbox yet. Get me to start ranting about how broken the public relations industry is. It’s an industry that’s relying on this model that is no longer relevant. It’s relying on this model of, “You pay me $5,000 and I’ll introduce you to this influencer or this journalist.” There are other good things that PR people do. Unfortunately, too much of it relies on this gatekeeper philosophy, which is absolutely insane. The reason why is because every influencer is now available. I don’t know if you heard but we have a thing called social media. A lot of PR people are good at what they do. They’re awesome, great, and are the friendliest people you’ll ever meet.

This old model of, “If you want to meet Susie over a WKRP, you’ve got to pay me some money and I’ll make that introduction.” You don’t need to do that anymore. All you need to do is focus on being the kind of business owner or executive who can bring value to Susie and her audience. It’s not that hard. We’ll help you do the right stuff in order to do that. We can do that at a fraction of the cost of what normal public relations would like to charge you. We typically charge about 1/3 to 1/8 what a normal PR firm charges. We don’t do contracts. All of our services are a la carte. We are month to month. We’ve completely de-risked everything. That’s why we’re growing so fast.

We have served an audience that the PR industry has largely turned their nose up to in terms of, “We don’t want to serve small, medium-sized business owners because they’re always complaining about the price and they don’t like our contracts.” What would happen if you actually went into the blue ocean and provided that small business owner what they’re asking for? That’s what we’ve done. We have services that might be a couple of hundred dollars a month. We can help them move forward. As they have more success, they can layer on other services whenever they feel that it’s appropriate for them. As a result, we’ve been able to grow with some amazing clients.

For your agency, what are some of the key things that you do to drive new clients? I’m assuming it’s PR, but I’ll leave it as an open question.

We’ve stepped away from the term PR. What we look at is more influencer engagement for the purpose of increasing authority. Authority is a currency. We’re an authority currency platform or authority delivery platform. When clients come to us, they say, “We’re starting to do okay in business, but I don’t feel like I’m getting the respect that I’d like. I feel like I’m still having to wrestle with clients. They don’t respect me. I’m not getting invitations to speak at conferences. I feel like we’re still paying way too much in terms of our cost per lead. I feel like we’re not growing at the rate that we should.”

The number one reason that companies are not growing at the rate they wish they could is because they don’t have enough authority. We believe that authority can be easily earned. It comes from two places. Social proof and associations. Social proof is when you build your social media audience and engagement. You give a lot of value to people and people like you. Associations are when you have to be seen associating with other people who have social proof and who other people respect. The fact that I got to speak with Tony Robbins, for example, I’m going to mention that. Those who know Tony Robbins say, “If the Tony Robbins organization invited Josh to speak, he must be an okay guy.” Those are the kinds of opportunities that we help facilitate for our clients. When they do, they make more money.

What are some of the biggest challenges that you face at Up My Influence?

We’ve been consistently growing by a good 40% per year. I believe we could grow by 400%. One thing that we have done is to acquire funding. We did that because we believe it’s time to double down. I don’t think that it was appropriate to do it in the first year or two. I have historically managed a lot of the sales and marketing for our company. Because I haven’t built a big enough team, that has kept us from scaling at the rate we can. I absolutely believe that we will be an eight-figure company. It’s only because I haven’t made those scary and risky investments. It’s scary to invest in services. I acknowledge that when we’re chatting with clients, for some that are newer in business, it feels risky and scary to invest in somebody that is going to help them grow their business. You don’t know if it’s going to work or not. The problem is that you won’t know until you do the thing. That’s why we try to make it as risk-free as possible by working month to month. We don’t do long-term contracts. That’s one thing we’ve learned. Where we’ve been a little bit conservative in our investments, there is a cost to that. You have to make investments if you want to grow.

I’d like to mention our BLG tips for corporate escapees just like Josh. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Build Live Give. You can see some brilliant tips there. Please subscribe and if you love the content, please share. The next section is the Live section. Tell us about your daily habits that help you be so energetic.

I have lots of coffee. I wake up at 6:00 and I have learned that you have to frontload your activity that is going to get you to your long-term goals. For me, it helps that one of my sons need to be up at 6:00 AM. I wake up with him and get him ready out the door. I’ll usually have a devotional. I’m doing personal development. I’m taking time for myself. I am trying to do things meditating, affirmations, taking the dog around the block, and going through those things like. That absolutely sets the pace for the entire day. I can tell you the opposite. I’ve had this happen from time to time. Maybe something happened the night before and I ended up sleeping in late. I’m waking up 30 minutes before my first appointment. Those days are when I don’t feel like I’m in the groove. I feel out of sorts, so I have to begin the day with intention. A good book that I’m sure you’re familiar with is The Miracle Morning. Get that book. It’s just living your life with intention. Hal Elrod wrote The Miracle Morning. Get that book and read it if you haven’t read it already. You don’t have to wake up at 5:00 AM. You should wake up with enough time so that you can begin your day with intention.

Jenny, your wife, who you married fourteen days of meeting her. What are you going to say to Jenny about the support she’s giving you through this journey?

The wife, husband, spouse or partner of an entrepreneur is a special calling. It’s one where you witness the ups and downs and you experience the ups and downs yourself. However, it’s so important to maintain that support and Jenny has. It’s been challenging. We’ve been through multiple financial difficulties over the years. We’ve also had six-figure months. That’s the life. I’m so honored. There are partners and spouses that are not designed well for it. If you are a partner or a spouse of someone who is living the entrepreneurial lifestyle, I want to let you know, please hang in there. Your partner or spouse may not succeed this time around. They may not succeed for a few years. If you support them, work and problem-solve together, work as their go-to person or someone that they can confide in, you’ll come up with answers to big challenges together. I promise you that the journey is going to be the most rewarding aspect. It’s going to be more rewarding than the money itself. It’s great to have some extra money, I’m not going to lie. It’s the experience of climbing that mountain together and being able to look back and say, “We did it together,” is so rewarding. It’s worth it.

As long as you keep doing the thing, keep on showing up, keep on learning from smart people, listening to the podcast, you’re going to listen to a lot of smart people. You might read what I’m saying and you might say, “I believe that at an intellectual level.” You have to understand that the people that Paul is interviewing, when you go from head-level belief to heart-level belief, and know that if there were a faster, more efficient, and more effective way for you to build success, I would be telling you that. I’m telling you the truth. When you believe me on a heart level, that is when things start to open up. You learn from other people’s experiences and their pain. You shortcut those pains and those hard knocks. You’ll find that you can start to accelerate in business.

The next section is the Give section. What’s a cause or a community that you’re passionate about and why?

Every year globally, billions of dollars in food get wasted. Some of it is systemic. As consumers, we don’t have a direct impact, but we can work together to be considerate of ending food waste. It’s insanity to me. We’re throwing away billions of dollars of perfectly good food. I’m not talking about food that’s spoiled, I’m talking about perfectly good food. I’ll speak specifically for the US. I can’t speak for a lot of other places in the world. In the United States, we have this food dating system. We’ll have expiration dates on food. I’m going to make a little impact right here. Those expiration dates, according to the USDA, have absolutely no bearing on food safety. You can have a box of cereal and it says that it expired a year ago. That does not mean that the food is unsafe. It’s perfectly fine.

I want you to go to a website called Still Tasty. You are going to learn a lot about not having to throw away food. You need to monitor your produce much better so that you’re not throwing it away. Learn to use your freezer. Learn to preserve things in jars. Trust me. I’m a busy dude. If I can do it, you can do it. In the US, we’ve got Ziploc bags and use your freezer. Stop throwing away food. If you have products in your home and you see that you’re not going to be able to use it and feel comfortable that that food is probably going to go bad before a certain amount of time, I want you to develop a friendship with a local charity or food pantry. I want you to bring 3 to 5 items over there. For us, it’s a local women’s shelter. I want you to get to know them. Once or twice a month, I want you to bring a couple of bags over there. Go through your pantry, see what you’re not using, and bring it on over. Make it a habit.

Engaging Influencers: You can improve your associations at any time by plugging into great podcasts.

I was at a taping of the Oprah show with my wife. Bono from U2 was performing with Alicia Keys. I’ll never forget that there was a moment when he was talking about ending poverty. He said, “At some point in the future, we will look at how we ended poverty. We’ll look around and say, ‘How did we let that go on so long when it’s actually an easy problem to solve?’” How do you do it? Everybody does a little bit. You could instantly end hunger and lack in our local communities. It doesn’t take that much work. It takes everybody doing a little bit once or twice a month. Bring what you don’t need to your favorite local church, pantry, food bank, or local charity and develop a relationship. You’re going to feel so good for giving.

The last section is the Action section. I’m going to ask you some questions and get some rapid-fire responses. The first one, what are your top three productivity tips?

In terms of communication platform, as you’re building a team, get on Slack sooner rather than later. You have to systematize that. Similarly, I don’t do anything unless it’s scheduled. I do not let the day just happen to me. Granted, there are always things that are going to come up. Even when things come up, I intentionally leave open spots in my schedule so that I can say, “This needs to get done. I can’t do it right now, but I am going to schedule it for 90 minutes from now,” unless it truly is something that’s incredibly urgent. I almost never take phone calls. If someone calls me, I almost always let it go to voicemail. Everything is scheduled. I’ll let it go to voicemail and I will schedule that callback.

Similarly, my team knows that as the CEO, I don’t do anything unless it’s in my schedule. It’s easy to schedule time with me. I make sure that they all have access to my calendar. I use a scheduling app. I also block off time for my kids. I block off time for my wife. I don’t get too pent up. I leave an open space. I might say, “I’m intentionally going to leave this hour blank. If nothing else comes up, I’m going to play a game on my iPad.” This is one thing I’ve learned about high achievers. They schedule their goof-off time or they leave an open spot in their calendar so that they can go for a walk or a run, hang out with their kids, goof around or have complete blow-off time. You’ve got to be able to do that. It has everything to do with intentionality.

You mentioned Slack and a scheduling tool. What are some other apps that you love using in your business or software?

I’m also a big fan of Evernote. I try to keep notes of everything. One thing I don’t want to do is to have to remember anything. If it’s a bit of information and I think that I am going to need that information at some point in the future and I don’t have it easily available in my Gmail, I will keep a running note. It’s almost like I’m journaling stuff I want to remember. Anytime I’m listening to a podcast, I keep a little black book with me. When I hear a recommendation, I jot it down. At least a few times a week, I will go through and transfer those notes to Evernote. Even if Evernote is a big mishmash, I try to put some context in there so I can search. Evernote is not the only app. I’m sure that there are probably some better apps than that. It just happens to be the one that I’ve been using forever so I’m in love with it.

There’s one other thing that I want to share. I am a huge fan. The future of sales, the next couple of years, one trend that I think is going to be big for sales is going to be using video. If you are not using video in sales, you better get with it. There are many different platforms out there. We use one called BombBomb, which easily allows you to send videos to your prospects. Thank-you videos are the most effective videos that you can send. Watch what happens to your sales cycle when you start implementing video.

I live on podcasts. This is how I learn. I get into phases where I obsess about certain topics. I’m a person of faith so I’ve been trying to look for great messages, especially around Christmas time. That’s where I try to focus on some things that will help me draw closer to divinity. I’m a big fan of marketing. BombBomb has a podcast called the . It’s pretty good. It’s another major trend that is going to be helpful. I’m a fan of Duct Tape Marketing. Shows like Hidden Brain and other things help us understand human behavior a lot better. Anytime I can fill my life with inspiration, shows like yours where you’re profiling success stories are so important that you get that on a regular basis. We are the combined average of the five people we hang around with most. You can improve your associations at any time by plugging into great podcasts.

I do most of my learning on audio. I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I don’t read a whole lot of books. I will when I have no other choice, but I generally am a rabid consumer of audio content. I think it’s important that we know ourselves. We know how we learn and that we don’t feel the pressure. If you don’t read textbooks, that’s okay. You don’t have to. If you love learning, go ahead and get a subscription to Blinkist or Audible, for example. It’s a great way to digest books quickly. Feed that monster. It can keep those associations with successful people coming.

You’ve given us so much valuable advice. What’s some parting advice you’d like to leave?

The one thing I’ve learned is that the thing that scares you the most, the most difficult for you, or gives you the most anxiety, pay close attention to that. Ask yourself big and important questions and allow yourself to journal about why this gives me anxiety. “Why am I afraid? What am I afraid of? Why do I feel boxed in? What is the worst thing that could happen if I truly failed with this thing?” Explore that and then say, “What would happen if I increased my circle of comfort by an inch, by a little bit?” If I were to become a master at that one thing, it could absolutely change my life in a major way. Maybe you want more patience with your kids. Maybe you want to be able to communicate from the stage a bit better. Lean into the thing that you wish you had but makes you uncomfortable. You don’t have to drive yourself insane with jumping into the fire, so to speak. I want you to move an inch every day. Read stories about people who have conquered that problem.

If you suffer from anxiety, I feel you. Anxiety sucks. You can improve in that area. There’s so much good information out there. Depression and mental health issues suck. It’s hard. It’s so horrible to deal with those things. I know those things firsthand. I’ve got dear family members that suffer from those things. I promise you that there are ways to cope and grow from that. Here’s the amazing thing. When you start getting on the other side of those small victories, you now have an insight that you can help somebody else with. I believe that the thing that we have the greatest challenge with is usually an invitation to make the world a better place by overcoming it in small ways on a regular basis.

The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)

I used to be a heavy guy and I eventually lost all the weight. I ran a couple of marathons. Now, I have an insight that has allowed me to serve so many people by truly understanding a journey but still having empathy for not being able to even run around the block. Embrace the things that either God or the universe has given you. It sucks right now. Trust me, we all have those things. I don’t mean to make light of any challenge that you have in life. How can you learn in small ways to master it? When you do that, watch what happens. It’s truly beautiful.

It’s been so great having you here, Josh. It was brilliant. Josh has been kind to help you. Go to UpMyInfluence.com/discovery and mention BLG in there, Josh will give you a free fifteen-minute authority. It’s normally worth a couple of hundred US dollars, but Josh has kindly given it to all of the corporate escapees. Josh, being a corporate escapee himself, he knows how hard the journey is. He failed six times before his seventh took off. If you’re there and you need some help, exposure and influencer engagement, please take Josh up on that. Josh, it’s absolutely brilliant having you on the podcast. I loved it. Thanks for coming.

Paul, thank you so much for having me.

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That was such an energy-packed interview with Josh. He had some brilliant insights but three in particular that stood out for me. One was how to build influencer engagement affordably. He gives you some valuable content there. Second is why he failed in six businesses and the secret behind his success in 7 and 8. Absolutely gold. The third thing is paying attention to what is most difficult for you and slowly go towards that and get some specific feedback. I’d love to hear what you thought of this interview and any questions you’ve got. Email me at Paul@BuildLiveGive.com. If you know someone else that could benefit from this blog, please forward it to them. Thank you.

About Josh Elledge

Josh Elledge is U.S. Navy veteran who became a serial entrepreneur who builds the companies he needs most in the world. In 2014, He launched UpMyInfluence to help entrepreneurs like himself attract the perfect audiences and grow their brands without the crazy costs and contracts associated with traditional PR companies. Since then, UpMyInfluence (UMI) has evolved into a purpose-driven platform bent on totally DEMOCRATIZING access to influence. Josh wholeheartedly believes UMI has a moral imperative to help entrepreneurs own their expertise, share their wisdom, and serve the world with their collective messages. Oh, and to help members grow revenue too!

UMI was the natural outgrowth of his first startup, SavingsAngel.com which had grown to more than 50 employees and grossed more than $6 million in sales with less than $500 in advertising spent. He did it all through building authority and serving audiences in the media.

Josh is a frequent speaker at business and startup conferences including Social Media Marketing World and a Tony Robbins event for his Business Mastery grads. He’s a weekly consumer expert on Fox 35 Orlando and News 13, writes a syndicated column for nine newspapers (with total readership above 1.1 million readers), and regularly appears on more than 75 TV stations across the country. All told, Josh has appeared in the media more than 2000 times.

Passionate about his family, physical fitness (an avid fitness geek and 5K to marathon runner), and breaking out of Escape Rooms, Josh now lives in Orlando with his wife and three children.